


i was a vampire myself (in the devil town)

by orphan_account



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Magical Realism, Vignette, Vintage Marvel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4624482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The city is overflowing with new tenants in Hell’s Kitchen, men with loud motorcycles and smelling of hand-me-down leather jackets. Women using copious amounts of aerosol hairspray (and pungent dye, he thinks, to cover their red hair. Tamed Irish accents give them away.) There are brawls stinking of alcohol in the street under his apartment and in the alleys, ones only he can hear. When he goes to break them up, it’s like they were never there at all.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Vintage Marvel bleeds into modern day Hell's Kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was a vampire myself (in the devil town)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petitpavot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petitpavot/gifts).



> This story really grabbed ahold of me this morning and didn't let go. I have no idea why but sometimes stories are just like that. A few notes are in order!
> 
> The concept of this fic originates with postcardmystery's wonderful fic "you imagined, from other stories you've read, that you know it well [but they flattered you]" found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/538030 I loved the idea of old texts bleeding into new ones and incorporating mental illness into that. If you haven't read it, go check it out.
> 
> Content Warning: bipolar disorder, self-harm, paranoid psychosis, vomit, panic attacks, questioning reality, eerie imagery
> 
> Title is from Devil Town by Bright Eyes. I liked the on the nose idea that some things were eternal in the devil town.
> 
> Thanks to petit-pavot on tumblr for encouraging my bipolar Matt Murdock ideas. You are my bipolar buddy and I love that you encourage any and all of my ridiculous and passionate bipolar feelings about fictional characters.

He’s running, always running, through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen when he stops, panting for breath. His target, the attacker of a young woman, has disappeared off of his radar as though he was never there. He feels out through the city, the seventy-five meters in every direction where he’s sure, he’s _sure_ he can detect any person anywhere, but nothing resonates. Not the man he was chasing and not the woman who was victimized either.

The man and the woman had smelled _different_ like the pages of an old book, smog, and dirt. Their dialogue had had a strange, tinny sound, like it was being spoken through an aluminum can and a piece of string. A sort of chill had run up Matt’s spine when he found them, but he had ignored it in favor of helping the young woman.  Now, he’s not sure if that was the greatest decision after all.

He’s not unfamiliar with the signs that he’s losing his mind, but maybe, maybe this time if he keeps his inertia he can beat it through spite and sheer force of will.

Or, maybe, he’ll end up in the hospital. Again.

***

The city is overflowing with new tenants in Hell’s Kitchen, men with loud motorcycles and smelling of hand-me-down leather jackets. Women using copious amounts of aerosol hairspray (and pungent dye, he thinks, to cover their red hair. Tamed Irish accents give them away.) There are brawls stinking of alcohol in the street under his apartment and in the alleys, ones only he can hear. When he goes to break them up, it’s like they were never there at all.

***

“Foggy,” he says one morning over coffee. “Have you noticed that there are a lot of new people in Hell’s Kitchen lately? Double the tenants in apartments, crowded sidewalks, that sort of thing?”

Foggy’s heart rate increases, but not in the way that indicates that he’s lying. It’s fear.

“No, Matt. It’s the same as it always was. Maybe even less people since Fisk set fire to half of the neighborhood. Are you ok?”

Matt runs his hand through his hair, messy from morning sex, unshowered for one, two days. Maybe three.

“Yeah, I think so. I’m ok. It was a…rhetorical question.”

Foggy touches the hand that Matt has wrapped around his coffee mug, and strokes the fingers with his thumb.

“You told me once that you promised you would tell me everything. I still hold you to that, Murdock. Are you really ok?”

Matt turns his hand until it’s cupped in Foggy’s palm so he can stroke his fingers too, warm from his coffee cup, naturally soft.

“I don’t know.”

***

The buildings are next, rising out of their ashes like a ghostly phoenix. The wind blows less and less soot in his face every day despite construction being scarce, too expensive to bother rebuilding ancient apartments even three years later. The walls are all made of a strange energy, not brick or concrete or wood but something closer to ink and electricity. They fill with the ghost tenants who solidify more every day and bounce off of his radar like real people. Their additional chatter makes Hell’s Kitchen feel like Grand Central Station, so packed that he can hardly move or breathe.

He meditates. The noise doesn’t stop.

***

Matt and Foggy are having sex, rough and passionate, both out of desire and to kill the ferocity in Matt’s brain and body. Foggy’s long hair is askew on the pillow and Matt’s face is buried in it as he frots him into the mattress and kisses his collarbone. His fingernails scratch the back of Matt’s neck as he gasps for breath like he’s running a marathon. Foggy’s heart is a riff on a snare drum, the reverberation of a cymbal, a deftly played crescendo of a major scale.

He might love Foggy more than he loves music, and that’s some tough competition.

Matt reaches down between Foggy’s legs, and strokes his cock slowly, savoring how heavy it is, how _real_ it is. He moves his mouth to Foggy’s to swallow his words –‘God, I love you, Matt’- as though he could hold them inside him after all is said and done –

 _He’s in a room much like his own, still naked, still gasping. Foggy’s long hair is gone and he smells_ wrong _like someone tried and failed to correctly photocopy his best friend. There’s arousal in the air, but fear too. Fear of getting caught and –_

Matt’s shaking and Foggy is stroking his hair. They’re sitting up, flaccid, no smells in the air to indicate that anyone came. He buries his face in Foggy’s chest and sobs.

“Shh, it’s ok,” says Foggy, but his heart betrays how scared he is. “I’m here. I’m real.”

That, at least, is the truth.

***

He goes to his priest before he goes to the doctor. Matt meets him in the confessional rather than in the chapel, the quiet and privacy a welcome change from his daily onslaught of sensations.

“What’s on your mind, my son?” says Father Lantom. Matt sighs.

“Father…I’ve been experiencing things that other people say aren’t real. New people moving into the city, unreal buildings popping up out of nowhere. You know I’ve had troubles with mental illness in the past, Father, but this seems different. It’s like Hell’s Kitchen is slowly rebuilding itself into something…something else. I don’t know what it is or why it’s happening, but it feels so real. I came here wondering if maybe this meant I was corrupted or possessed or that maybe I was being punished for something that I did. Do you think that’s true?”

Father Lantom is quiet for a long time. It is then that Matt realizes that Father Lantom is emitting the same strange energy as the others, and that his voice has changed too.

“You aren’t being punished, Matthew. Go home and get some rest. You’re probably working yourself too hard.”

Matt doesn’t rest at all that night. He can’t stop worrying about what might get stolen from him next.

***

Foggy takes Matt to the hospital when he hasn’t slept for seventy-two hours straight. The two of them doze off on each other’s shoulders in the waiting room. Matt’s hand is in Foggy’s; he squeezes it intermittently to make sure that he is real.

A lot of people in the hospital aren’t ‘real.’

The doctor prescribes him a short-term atypical antipsychotic, and Matt takes it faithfully. He wants to get real work done again and to help people on the streets; both of these are hindered when he is ill.

The mania goes away as it always does, but the city stays the same. The Hell’s Kitchen that Matt grew up with is fading away while something new is taking over, and only Matt can tell.

***

One day, Karen looks out the window and sees a woman with tall hair walking a large golden retriever. Several weeks before, the woman had seemed to be only a faint outline of energy. She has solidified enough to be seen now, and hope grows in Matt’s heart. He doesn’t like that the old Hell’s Kitchen is fading, but at least other people see it too.

She doesn’t comment on the fading homeless woman pushing a shopping cart up and down the street. It rattles in Matt’s ears, but the sound is distant. Later that day, only the ghost of a person remains and the shopping cart isn’t making any noise at all.

***

His suits are different. His hair is different. His costume is different. His furniture is different. His computer disappears. His cell phone –

***

He’s throwing up in Foggy’s bathroom because the Kingpin has torn his life apart until he has nothing. He wants nothing more than to beat the man that did this, to steal his life back. Paranoia has settled in, real and raw, and Matt knows this like the back of his hand, knows that _this_ is crazy when he’s lucid enough to do anything other than lie on his back and hear the voices that tell him that he is ruined, that he is disgusting. He can hear Wilson Fisks voice loud and clear, but when he stands up and charges towards the door with a thirst for revenge, Foggy catches him by the arm, and leads him back over to the couch. Matt is always too tired to fight back.

There are cuts on his arms and legs and he doesn’t know how they got there. Foggy strokes them with his thumb sometimes when he thinks Matt is sleeping. His heart skips a beat; something terrible happened, and Foggy saw.

Matt doesn’t ask what he did or why. He takes his medication, tries to sleep, and pretends to not notice when all of his possessions relocate to Foggy’s apartment.

When Foggy leans over Matt’s shoulder to wipe the sick off his face, Matt realizes that Foggy’s hair isn’t long anymore.

***

The noise in Hell’s Kitchen isn’t double anymore. The tenants are different and their culture is unfamiliar, but the city is finally almost settled into whatever it wants to be. Matt patrols the streets as Daredevil, and he catches people who were unstoppable only months before. It’s empowering to be on patrol again, almost like he has his life back.

He doesn’t kill the Kingpin, but he locks him up. Matt’s there when they bring him in, and yes, he has changed too. He’s denser, colder. Full of confidence the other Kingpin hadn’t attained yet.

Matt and Foggy pop a bottle of champagne when the verdict is guilty, and kiss the whole night afterward like they’re touching each other for the first time.

Maybe they are.

***

The saddest loss is Karen, because she retreats into someone simpler and loses the conviction and strength that made her wonderful and interesting. He catches glimmers of it sometimes when they get a moment alone, but she’s too trapped in the strappings of 1960’s womanhood for it to truly _go_ anywhere.

He asks for her opinion on cases anyway, brings her to the courtroom, and tells her about Daredevil. She’s still in there somewhere; he’s sure of it. All she needs is cultivation.

***

Foggy’s wardrobe has bowties now, silk ones that he wears every day. He’s gained weight, and sometimes he’s a little slower on the uptake. But he’s still _Foggy_ , his wonderful, supportive best friend, his patient and gentle partner. When he holds hands with Foggy in bed late at night, he can’t help but be grateful that they seem to fit together in any universe.

***

He’s standing on top of a building and listening to the sounds of his city. His costume is red and yellow now, or so they say. He can’t see the colors, and never will. They don’t matter, anyway. Daredevil existing at all is the important part.

This city has completed its transformation, and so has he. He sees now why others faded in and out of the city while some stayed and changed. Their law firm, the church, this costume, the Kingpin – all unchanging symbols of what Hell’s Kitchen has always been and what it could be. Hell’s Kitchen needs him, and it always will.

Matt stopped questioning his sanity a long time ago. He’s crazy and he’s not and separating the two doesn’t really matter to him anymore. Matt’s sure this transformation is real, and if it’s not, well – he’s sure someone will help him somewhere down the line. There’s no use worrying about it when he could be helping people instead.

Anyway, as world-consuming hallucinations go, he could do a lot worse.

Suddenly, he hears a scream echo through a nearby alleyway. Three blocks – he’ll be there in no time. Matt grabs his billy clubs and dives off the roof in hot pursuit.

The man without fear will always be there to save the day.


End file.
